FOR BUSH OFFSPRING, POLITICAL FOES CAN'T KILL CRIMINALS FAST ENOUGH

Put the Bush boys, Jeb and Junior, down as fledgling politicos who are establishing the tone for this peevish election season.

Down in Texas, George W. Bush is striving to unseat Democratic Gov. Ann Richards, while in Florida, Jeb Bush is leading the state's Democratic governor, Lawton Chiles, by an increasing margin.

Jeb (that's John Ellis Bush in Kennebunkport shorthand) is lately attacking Chiles on the death-penalty question, always a favorite with Republicans. But Jeb-and his brother-have brought an updated twist to the debate, since their Democratic rivals in fact support the death penalty.

Jeb is running a television ad in which the mother of Elisa Nelson, a 10-year-old murder victim, blames Chiles because the man convicted of the killing 13 years ago has not been executed. Larry Mann is on Death Row.

"We're still waiting for justice," Wendy Nelson says in the ad. "We won't get it from Lawton Chiles because he's too liberal on crime."

Chiles has signed 16 death warrants and presided over eight executions since his 1990 election.

Whenever possible, he points out that as many convicted murderers have been executed in his first term as were done away with in the first terms of his predecessors, Republican Bob Martinez and Democrat Bob Graham.

Still, Chiles says he doesn't feel compelled to hold a news conference and "brag about putting people to death."

And Jeb Bush, when asked, acknowledges that there is nothing Chiles or any governor can do to speed the state-sanctioned killing of Mann, whose case remains tied up in appeal.

OK, the ad is dishonest and exploitative, but Bush insists it's a good way to elevate the public discussion of crime, the issue most voters maintain is their primary concern.

Brother George is exhibiting a similar strategy in Texas, arguing that the Democratic governor isn't doing enough to get more convicted murderers into the end zone.

It's a hard sell, even for a Bush. Richards, a Texas-style liberal, has presided over 45 executions in her four years in Austin.

That's one a month and sets a standard for the 50 states. But it's not good enough for George W., who apparently thinks the governor ought to show up at the execution site and strap the bad guys into Old Sparky herself.

Early in the campaign, Bush showed his devotion to public safety by offering viewers an ad that staged the fictional abduction of a fictional woman by a fictional man in a fictional parking lot.

Some of this behavior might be familiar to Illinois voters, who have learned from their own Republican governor that women-at least Democratic women-can't be tough on crime.

Out in California, Democrat Kathleen Brown, who opposes the death penalty, lashed back at GOP Gov. Pete Wilson's soft-on-crime argument by announcing in a TV debate that her daughter was a rape victim and her son had been mugged.

Illinois Democrat Dawn Clark Netsch has yet to play that sort of card against Republican Gov. Jim Edgar, who kicked off his re-election campaign with the execution of mass murderer John Wayne Gacy.

It's pretty primitive stuff, but all the indications are that it's potent politics.

You could argue that capital punishment-now permitted in 37 states-hasn't had much effect on the murder rate in this country. Certainly it's no safer in places like Texas and Florida than it is in, say, Iowa.

Politically, however, the argument is about over. Even New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, a Democrat who has vetoed a capital punishment bill in each of the last 12 years, has signaled he is prepared to adopt the let-the-legislature-decide approach.

What the Brothers Bush are up to is a transparent attempt to recast the crime debate at a time when Democrats from President Clinton on down are embracing the death penalty.

Republicans saw the issue slipping away from them in 1992, when then-Gov. Bill Clinton, a "new Democrat," returned to Little Rock, Ark., in the middle of his White House campaign to make sure no one missed the execution of a cop-killer.

There's plenty of cynicism to go around on this issue, but Jeb and Junior are setting the pace.

Jeb Bush says that if elected, he'll sign more death warrants than Lawton Chiles. If that isn't enough to please the voters, the next candidate for Florida governor might as well run wearing a hood and toting an ax.